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MANHATTAN – The former editor of High Times magazine claims in court that he was defrauded of his shares in the counter-culture monthly.

Represented by the Clancy Law Firm, Steven Hager brought his Jan. 9 suit in Manhattan Supreme Court some six months after Adam Levin’s Oreva Group bought a majority stake in the once family-owned magazine for $42 million.

Hager notes that he had been editor of High Times since 1998 but that his relationship with the magazine soured in 2013. As explained in a recent blog post, Hager at the time was nursing plans to enter the Sundance Film Festival.

Cannabis activists will be at the event gathering signatures for a recreational cannabis initiative for 2018

By Michael Bachara
Hemp News

This weekend, on June 24-25, the Michigan cannabis community is coming together in Clio for the 4th Annual High Times Midwest Cannabis Cup. High Times, the organization sponsoring Cannabis Cups since 1988, has been working to unite cannabis freedom fighters since 1974.

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Feds threaten to shut down the 2017 Las Vegas High Times Cannabis Cup in a Feb. 16 letter to the Moapa Paiute Tribe.

The article reports that U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden, based in Las Vegas, sent a Feb. 16 letter to the Moapa Paiute Tribe reminding the tribe that the transport, possession, use and distribution of marijuana is illegal under federal law.

The letter obtained by the Reno Gazette-Journal said that the marijuana trade show and festival, planned for March 4 and 5, would be in violation of that law.

In the letter, Bogden states, “I am informed that the tribal council is moving forward with the planned marijuana event referred to as the 2017 High Times Cannabis Cup because it is under the impression that the so-called ‘Cole Memorandum’ and subsequent memoranda from the Department of Justice permit marijuana use, possession and distribution on tribal lands when the state law also permits it. Unfortunately, this is an incorrect interpretation of the Department’s position on this issue.”

The Cole Memorandum provides guidance to federal officials in states that have legalized marijuana in some form.

The Guidance Memorandum, another memo, indicates that tribal governments and U.S. attorneys should consult government-to-government as issues arise.

Maine's Marijuana Legalization Act, which has qualified for November's ballot and is being sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), would require merchants to keep marijuana magazines behind the counter if their stores are open to customers younger than 21.

An almost identical provision which was part of a bill passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2013 was so blatantly unconstitutional that Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the state wouldn't enforce it, reports Jacob Sullum at Reason.com.

Yet, just three years later, MPP is asking Maine voters to approve the same restriction as the price they must pay for the state's "legalization" initiative.

The Marijuana Legalization Act which will be on the Maine ballot in November says "a magazine whose primary focus is marijuana or marijuana businesses may be sold only in a retail marijuana store or behind the counter in an establishment where persons under 21 years of age are present."

The Honorable Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), the Congressman who last week called for the resignation of acting DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg for his remarks about medicinal marijuana, joins as a featured speaker at the High Times Business Summit on Wednesday, December 16.

Rep. Blumenauer, the Congressman who last week called for the resignation of acting DEA chief Chuck Rosenber will speak from 11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. at the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, D.C.

In addition, established cannabis-related businesses which apply for financing to expand their business between now and Friday, December 11, may secure a loan from Dynamic Alternative Finance, a Colorado-based company focused on supporting cannabis-related businesses. Scott Jordan, the company’s Director of Business Development will announce a loan to at least one established canna-business who applies, qualifies and attends the conference.

As Oregon implements recreational marijuana legalization, you might expect bigger festivals and conventions like this weekend's Oregon Hemp Convention would become the norm. But as of now the convention is the only big cannabis event scheduled in Portland this year.

The state's voters last November chose to legalize recreational marijuana use, but despite its mainstream status, Portland doesn't have any official Boulder-style 4/20 smoke-ins on the calendar, nor any other mass cannabis gatherings, reports Jamie Hale at The Oregonian.

Hempstalk had been Portland's primary marijuana rally for the past decade, before the Portland Parks Bureau denied its permit for 2015, claiming unchecked illegal public consumption of cannabis at previous events, despite organizers' serious efforts to control it.

New York-based High Times magazine announced its touring Cannabis Cup would come to Portland in July, but no further details have been released, leading to concern that it, too, will fall through.

That leaves the Oregon Hemp Convention, where no smoking is allowed and the focus is on the industry, as the sole major cannabis event in town. And director Jerry Norton is just fine with that.

Two publications have launched a federal lawsuit against the state of Colorado over laws prohibiting the state's legal recreational marijuana industry from advertising on television, radio, online or in print.

A suit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Denver by High Times magazine and Denver alternative weekly newspaper Westword says that the rules are "unjustifiably burdensome" and unconstitutionally violate First Amendment free speech rights, reports Keith Coffman at Reuters.

"Government restrictions on commercial speech that concerns lawful activity and is not misleading violate the First Amendment," the complaint reads.

Colorado's recreational marijuana law doesn't allow advertising on television, radio, the Internet, or in print unless they can establish that no more than 30 percent of the targeted audience is under the age of 21, an unrealistic and almost Kafka-esque restriction. The advertising limits do not apply to Colorado's medical marijuana industry, which has been around since 2001.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers' office said it was reviewing the complaint.

The lawsuit names as defendants Gov. John Hickenlooper and the head of a state department which oversees the marijuana industry. It says that Colorado's voters approved recreational marijuana and its regulation like alcohol, and that no such ad bans apply to the alcohol industry.